Considered Opinions

Grandad’s Workbench

Once upon a time, when I was just a pup, Harry Shively, my grandfather on my mother’s side, asked my dad for advice about a workbench he was building. My dad said, “Use hot-dipped 16-penny nails, and set them flush”.  Dad, of course, knew that the lumber Harry was planning to use was green^[i]Not in color – green in lumber means not-yet-cured-with-age. Sassafras that he had milled on an old trailer-mounted saw, powered by his Oliver tractor PTO. Some of those trees, along the lane that led to the river, must have been a foot in diameter at the ground, so they made good lumber. It wouldn’t have taken a carpenter to know that those 2 x 6s that Harry was planning for the top deck were going to warp and twist as they shrank over time. Dad, being an accomplished woodworker, knew that hot-dipped nails would hold far better than regular wire nails, and screws would have been far too expensive in the 1950s.

Harry instead used finish nails and countersunk them. Obviously, as the lumber cured, the whole thing fell apart, as Dad knew it would. I remember Dad being aggravated that Harry had not followed his advice, and he was reluctant to offer after that, even when Harry asked for it.

Seventy-five years later, I think of that experience often, but in a very different way. Dad was an experienced Woodworker, having already built a house in North Carolina, totally by himself, using salvaged materials, while Harry was a part-time farmer and steam turbine operator in a paper mill, with little or no experience in carpentry. Dad had valuable information to share, but it was hard for Harry to recognize and accept advice from anyone, particularly his son-in-law, 25 years his junior. Most of us are that way, and some of us work hard to get over it.

This is the barn today. The lane leading to the river is on the left, and the shop, where the workbench was built, is behind the door on the right, but I doubt that there is anything left of it. After all the years that have passed, I am finally learning to moderate what was Dad’s reaction, and to offer opinions only when asked, and forget whether or not those opinions, with their decades of experience behind them, are awarded any value. If my attitude sounds unhelpful or cynical, read Epiphany and also consider something that Harry Shively said often that rings as true today as it did when he said it all those decades ago – “God bless the poor and ignorant people in the world, but God damn those who insist on remaining that way.” As stubborn as Harry was about taking advice, he was wise beyond his years about many things, and I think of him often and cherish what I learned from him.

By: Jim
Written: circa 2024
Published: September 1, 2025
Revised: 
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